The Black Page

"The Black Page #1" is a piece by American composer Frank Zappa known for being extraordinarily difficult to play. Originally written for the drum kit and melodic percussion (as "The Black Page Drum Solo"), the piece was later rearranged in several versions, including the disco "easy teenage New York version" (commonly referred to as "The Black Page #2") and a so-called "new-age version", among others.

Drummer Terry Bozzio said of the piece:

He wrote it, because we had done this 40-piece orchestra gig together and he was always hearing the studio musicians in LA, that he was musing on that, talking about the fear of going into sessions some morning and being faced with "the black page". So he decided to write his "Black Page". Then he gave it to me, and I could play parts of it right away. But it wasn't a pressure thing, it just sat on my music stand and for about 15 minutes every day for 2 weeks, before we would rehearse, I would work on it. And after 2 weeks I had it together and I played it for him. And he said, "Great!", took it home, wrote the melody and the chord changes, brought it back in. And we all started playing it.[1]

On the double live album Zappa in New York (recorded 12/1976, released 3/1978), Zappa noted the "statistical density" of the piece.[2] It is written in common time with extensive use of tuplets, including tuplets inside tuplets. At several points there is a crotchet triplet (sixth notes) in which each beat is counted with its own tuplet of 5, 5 and 6; at another is a minim triplet (third notes) in which the second beat is a quintuplet (actually a tuplet of 7), and the third beat is divided into tuplets of 4 and 5. The song ends with a crotchet triplet composed of tuplets of 5, 5, and 6, followed by two tuplets of 11 in the space of one.

Zappa would re-arrange the song into "The Black Page #2" shortly after his band's mastery of the piece. This second version has a disco beat, but nevertheless retains nearly every metric complexity from #1. One notable difference in this version is that the final set of tuplets feature a rhythmic change and are repeated three times to conclude the song. The 1991 live album Make a Jazz Noise Here includes a so-called "new age version", which incorporates lounge and reggae music. The 1994 album You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4 featured a version from 1984 that had a ska motif. Both of these versions included guitar solos from Zappa.